Wednesday, March 17, 2010

News Filter: Bill Roper Steps Aside

  • Yesterday's State of the Game article for Champions Online was a mix of the usual status updates, as well as some completely unexpected news. Bill Roper is stepping aside as Executive Producer to move on to other design responsibilities. Shannon Posniewski will be taking over the position. Although I don't know a whole lot about the man (other than the fact that he was previous Director of Game Programming), his one benefit is that his name isn't radioactive.

  • The public face of any personnel changes will always spin positive. But one might speculate that Roper, infamous since the foundering of Flagship Studios, was too large a distraction from the Cryptic message. If anything, though, I suspect he was just a lightning rod for a lot of dissatisfaction with the game.

  • Whatever the case, I wish him the best in his new position. I enjoy Champions quite a lot and I'm thankful for whatever hand he had in making it. And good luck to Shannon Posniewski. You have your work cut out for you.

  • I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention all the other good stuff in the SotG. Revelation will be coming soon, something I'm really excited about. On the horizion, he mentioned seeding additional missions throughout the zones soon, as well as the first adventure pack. For as much as people complain about the instancing in CO, I'm happy to see Cryptic embracing the technology to provide a diverse range of new content. If every new addition was shoehorned into the same five (or six, soon) zones, it would drive me crazy. All in all, it was an interesting day for CO.


© 2010 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.

3 comments:

  1. I'm not sure how much of his bad rep is deserved. HL was a long time ago after all. For better or worse, I think he is also going to end up taking the rap for a lot of the blunders we've sen in CO in the past year.

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  2. I was surprised at the news, but in hind-sight it does make sense. Bill's presence has always been a lightning rod for controversy just because of the HL stuff (deserved or not). Especially with the lapse in communication and change in community manager, this is just one more piece to getting a fresh start with the CO community.

    While I don't think Bill bears any responsibility for design decisions given how late he came into the project, the 0-day patch and lapse in communication did happen on his watch. Regardless, I hope he finds success in the new project he's moved on to.

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  3. @ Yeebo & Blue Kae - Being the public face on a troubled game twice over must take something out of you. I really hope he gets the chance to redeem himself in the public eye.

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